Recently, due to the wide spread use of the Internet, it has been common to provide geographical information converted to a digital form which was once offered in a form of printing such as books. A digital map service provided online, a navigation system installed in a vehicle, etc. may be examples. As such, one of benefits of the digitalized geographic information is to provide a variety of convenient functions for users through user interfaces capable of allowing the users to retrieve desired geographic information. Further, changes in the geographic information may be easily updated through remote updating services, etc., so that, in the aspect of latest geographic information, such digital data may be predominant over conventional printed materials.
In special, a technology of providing geographical information in a form of augmented reality (AR) which displays supplementary information, including computer graphics (CG), texts, etc., combined on an inputted image taken in real time by a terminal has been recently introduced. According to the AR technology, the technology may provide the geographical information for the user in a more intuitive method because it may offer supplementary information (e.g., a graphic element indicating a point of interest (POI), etc.) which overlaps visually with an inputted image, i.e., an image of the real world the user is watching as being inputted through a camera module of the terminal.
But it was general to simply display a name of an object in a form of string if supplementary information on the object included in a visual field of a terminal is provided by using the conventional augmented reality technology.
However, according to the conventional augmented reality technology, since an object that a user wants to search must be distinguished only by a string, etc., the discrimination among respective objects is not visually and expressly revealed. Further, since it is general that a size of a display equipped in a mobile terminal (e.g., a liquid crystal display, etc.) is not big enough to display a great amount of information, if multiple objects are included in a visual field of the terminal, visibility becomes poor due to a reduced size of the string and rates of misreading increase.
Accordingly, the applicant of the present invention came to develop a technology which supports the user to rapidly recognize an object included in the visual field of the terminal and accurately obtain information on the object by displaying graphic elements such as a brand, a logo, etc. of the object included in the visual field thereof with an inputted image to increase a degree of distinguishment of objects included in the visual field of the terminal from the viewpoint of the user.